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Chapter 11: Everyone Knows
🕑 Added 2025-09-05 11:19:43 +0000 UTCThe night she gave birth to Rhaego, a great turmoil ripped through what was left of Drogo's khalasar. It began quietly, with an old bloodrider moved by a desperate princess's oath. Under the cover of a greater chaos, Cohollo and the five hundred elite horsemen of Drogo's personal khas bypassed the camp's sentries and fled north into the darkness, carrying the child they believed was their future.
But the true chaos, the one that had allowed them to slip away, had been an act of brutal ambition. While Dany was locked away in her tent, Pono had made his move. He had spent the past days quietly turning the other captains to his side, and that night, he'd tried to force his way into the Khal's tent. Ser Jorah, a lone iron statue against a tide of horselords, had led Dany's guards in a bloody defense, killing seventeen warriors who tried to breach the perimeter.
By the next morning, the definite news arrived: Khal Pono had left, taking twenty thousand howling warriors with him. While the others had been watching a dying man, Pono had been consolidating power. In a single night, he had become one of the most powerful Khals on the Great Grass Sea.
His departure was the crack that broke the dam. Over the next two days, the remaining kos fell upon the carcass of the great khalasar like vultures, tearing away their own portions of tribes, property, slaves, and livestock.
On the fourth day, Daenerys stood on a low hill and looked out at the result. Where once a brown blanket of a hundred thousand people had covered the red earth, there was now only a single, tiny patch—her own small khas—a lonely blemish on the vast, empty landscape. The water was gone, the grass was gone. Everyone had to leave, or they would die.
Her plan had worked. Almost. She had underestimated one crucial thing: how seriously the Dothraki took the words of their wise women.
At dusk, against the backdrop of a huge, blood-red sunset, a long dragon of smoke and dust appeared on the horizon. A thousand riders, galloping hard. It was Jhogo.
Outside the thorn-and-bramble fence surrounding her camp, Ser Jorah and a hundred of her Dothraki knights stood with their blades drawn, a thin, determined line.
Jhogo's horse reared up as he reached them, its hooves pawing at the air, sending a spray of sand that made Jorah squint.
"You already left! Why have you come back?" Jorah's shout was muffled by his great helm.
Jhogo said nothing. With a grunt, he threw something dark and bloody toward Daenerys. It rolled to a stop at her feet. She looked down at an old, scarred face, its eyes and mouth wide open in a silent, final protest. It was Cohollo.
One by one, Jhogo's knights rode forward in an arc, and one by one, they dropped a severed head before her tent. The bodies had been left to the dogs and the sun, but the heads had been brought back as trophies. Soon, they were piled in a grotesque, reeking hill. Four days ago, five hundred elite riders had left. Four days later, five hundred bloody heads returned.
"Where," Daenerys said, her voice a hoarse whisper, "is my son?"
Khal Jhogo waved to a rider behind him. The man handed him a long wooden pole, four meters in length. Jhogo raised it high for all to see.
A thin, despairing wail rose from Irri and Dorea behind her.
Impaled on the top of the pole was a small, melon-sized head. It had the bronze skin of the Dothraki, Drogo's jet-black hair, and almond-shaped eyes that were a cloudy, lifeless lavender.
"Why?" Dany's face was a pale, bloodless mask. Her body swayed, but she forced herself to stand, to look at the new Khal with cold, dead eyes. "Did Cohollo not tell you of my oath? The child was no threat to you."
Jhogo grinned, a ferocious, triumphant slash across his face. "Killing the son of a previous Khal is our tradition. Everyone knows."
"Everyone knows!" his followers roared in unison.
"Your oath? Cohollo's promise?" Jhogo laughed, a harsh, grating sound. "He told us everything. But that is not our way. The great nation of horsemen does not care for such things. Everyone knows."
"Everyone knows!" the chant echoed again.
"Us?" Dany's mind, numb with shock, latched onto the word. "Cohollo had a full day's lead on you. You could not have caught him alone."
"From the moment he fled, that cunning dog Pono was on his trail," Jhogo boasted. "We all joined the hunt. I was simply the luckiest. I was the one who found the last of them." He raised the pole like a victory banner. "As expected of Drogo's finest. Five hundred of them killed nearly three thousand of us before they fell. When I found them, there were only thirteen riders left. I myself took the head of a bloodrider… and a little khal."
He pulled his long braid forward over his shoulder, pointing to the two new bells tied near the end. "Even though they were old and weak, they have still earned me two new bells. A Khal, after all, should have a long braid to signify his victories."
As he spoke, Dany remembered the Dothraki custom. A long braid for a life of victory, a cut braid for the shame of defeat. Drogo, who had never been defeated, had hair that fell below his hips, his braid thick with bells. Jhogo now counted a loyal old man and an infant as two great victories.
You will regret this, she thought, a cold, hard knot of hatred forming in her heart. I will see you dead for this, Jhogo. I swear it.
"What now?" she asked, her voice flat. "Will you kill me? And your former Khal?"
"She does not cry?" Jhogo muttered to the warrior beside him, a brutish man named Mago. "A woman as hard and cold as a wolf. We both lost."
Mago smirked. He was the one who had first captured the Lhazareen girl, Eloye. When the khalasar had shattered, he had taken her again, given her to Jhogo's new khalasar to be used by all, and then finally cut off her head and left it for Dany to find—his revenge for her initial interference. "I bet him you would faint," Mago said directly to Dany, his voice dripping with mockery. "He bet you would weep. A cold thing, you are."
Dany just stared through them, her charming purple eyes now as empty as a winter sky.
"Woman," Jhogo called out, "I swore an oath under the Mother of Mountains to never harm my Khal. Everyone knows."
"Everyone knows!" his followers chanted.
"A Khaleesi who has lost her Khal will never be touched by another Dothraki," he continued, reciting the ancient law. "She will be sent to Vaes Dothrak to become one of the dosh khaleen. Everyone knows."
"Everyone knows!"
From her own line of guards, Aggo stepped forward. "When the Khal is buried," he shouted, "we will escort the Khaleesi to Vaes Dothrak."
"Hmph. My khalasar will be waiting on the north bank of the river," Jhogo sneered. "Do not even think of running." He looked around her small, pathetic camp, and the whip in his hand cracked through the air. "Now, hand over the property that once belonged to the Khal, and no longer belongs to you."
"They have already taken the slaves, the warriors, and the herds," Ser Jorah growled.
"Iron Man, I want this tent," Jhogo said, pointing his whip at the great yurt behind her. "Only a Khal may live in a Khal's palace. The dosh khaleen have no need of such things."
Jorah's right hand went to the hilt of his sword. With his left, he quietly flipped down the visor of his helmet.
But Daenerys shook her head at him. She turned to Quaro. "Have the women tear down the tent."
